


Keep On Running With Knives

by Parttimesiska



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: And thus, Angst, Childhood Trauma, Codependency, Dark Will Graham, Drug Use, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal Lecter, Murder, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Someone Help Will Graham, Teenage Hannibal Lecter, Teenage Will Graham, The South, They grow up they get old they have secrets, Time Skips, Will Graham loves god almost as much as he loves to kill, Will Graham's father - Freeform, southern will graham rights, they're only teens for like half of this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 08:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30052614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parttimesiska/pseuds/Parttimesiska
Summary: Will Graham is a troubled teen with a drug problem and an intimate relationship with God, his father is a Jesus-freak and an alcoholic who somehow makes it to work every day, and Hannibal Lecter is a freshly-adopted teen brought from Lithuania to a small town in Louisiana, he is also now complicit with Will Graham in concealing a murder."I don't read the Bible, God speaks to me every night."
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	Keep On Running With Knives

“How long can you lick a wound 

before the taste of blood no longer scares you -

I’m asking for a friend.” 

Sonya Vatomsky 

  
  


It had been a few summers since Will had broken his hand, The accident had happened in the oppressive heat of the middle of July, just after his twelfth birthday and right before himself and his father had left the salt-filled air of the Florida Keys for Nags Head up in North Carolina. One small town off of the Atlantic coast bleeding into another, the only indication of any real time passing being the rise and fall of heat waves that caused sweat to prickle across the tanned back of Will’s neck, which would turn to cold shivers in the quiet night hours.

Will broke his hand in the middle of the busy season, when increased tourism to the coast for the average middle-American on summer vacation meant more boats than usual for Will and his father to repair. Together they repaired fishing boats and leisure pontoons, or mostly whatever they could get their hands on that paid well enough to bother fixing, and the whole thing had been a big inconvenience for them, because the clunky Velcro-strapped black brace Will had been given had to stay on for at least a month if not more, and Will had broken his dominant hand, which made him practically useless for helping out around the boatyards, more in the way of the older repairmen than anything else, seeing as he had only the one decent hand. All of this during the one time out of the year in which there’s almost too much work for them to do with only their two bodies. 

Daddy had put the brace onto Will himself, in a tensely quiet ceremony that felt far too paternal for either of them to be comfortable with. Beau Graham had been on his knees, faded denim on the murky brown carpeted floor in front of Will, who himself was sitting in one of the rusted metal folding chairs that they usually kept outside to use while working on motors that they took home with them from the docks. 

The living room area of their most recent rental home was tiny, and didn’t give much to look at beyond faintly mauve walls and an overstuffed floral loveseat under the large front facing window. In front of the loveseat was a small box TV which was never turned on. Beau Graham was a born-again Christian in the political heat of the 1980s satanic panic, and was adamantly at war with media that he believed promoted the word of Satan, but he also wasn’t home enough to be able to tell Will what was alright to watch and what wasn’t, so the TV stayed off. 

All of this left Will with nothing around to look at except for his father’s large, tanned hand which held his own small one gingerly, mindful of the purple-black bruising that marred his son’s otherwise matching gold skin, politely pretending not to notice how hard Will was having to bite his bottom lip to keep himself from making any noise of pain. 

Will had only been twelve at the time of all this, but he was tough. He was already a familiar friend of the scraped knees and bloody noses that came with a decidedly rough childhood in the rural South, and then there was also the eternal fever that he could never seem to shake, but he was still twelve, and his hand had hurt real bad. 

The look on Beau’s face had been decidedly worse than any of the actual physical pain. Will had known just as soon as he’d toppled out of the old canopy tree out back and landed on his outstretched hands that he was in trouble, which is why he’d tried to hide the accident from Beau for the first couple of days. He’d used his left hand to pick up his spoon while they ate their respective frozen dinners together the first few nights, he’d kept his right hand in his lap and minded carefully not to jostle it around too much, and when the bruising started to set in deep he’d kept his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his faded denim cutoffs whenever Beau was around. 

That had gone on for about a week before Beau had called Will out from his little room inside of the double wide that they were staying in to get him to help move a boat motor off of the bed of his old truck so that he could start to work on it some that afternoon. That summer had been the same one that Beau’s back had started to go out, slowly and then all at once, like so many other things in the South, and he’d made it clear that Will would be expected to help out with the work around the boatyards more from then on. 

So Will had run out to the truck quickly, pulling his hands out of his pockets where he’d hidden them on reflex to wrap them around the opposite edge of the heavy motor from Beau. They’d made it all of about two steps away from the truck together before tears had sprung up to Will’s eyes and the white-hot pain in his hand flared up so bad that he’d lost his grip on the motor and the thing had hit the ground with a dull thud and a loud series of expletives from Beau.

Once Beau had gotten done swearing up a decidedly un-Christian blue streak, he’d finally looked away from the motor on the ground and back up towards Will, who was clutching his small right hand in his left and looking down at the motor like he was hoping the thing would melt into the ground. It was then that Beau had finally got a good look at the furious shade of violet his son’s hand was, and felt a wave of long-familiar exhaustion wash over him.

“Y’got somethin’ to tell me, Will?” He’d said real quietly, and Will had given him a shrug, refusing to meet his father’s eyes.

“Were you just plannin’ on toughen’ that out by yourself then?” He’d said before stepping around the motor to grab Will’s wrist, jerking Will’s slim body forward so quickly that the boy had nearly tripped over the motor beneath them. 

Beau had raised Will’s purple hand to his eyes and let out a long sigh. The thing was obviously broken. 

“No, Daddy.” Will had said quietly. His head was hung, but Beau had been able to see shame paint his son’s cheeks and neck red. Will was always terrible at hiding his emotions, which was probably why he’d taken to avoiding eye contact as much as possible. He couldn’t hide anything with that face of his.

“Then why didn’t y’tell me y’did it?” Beau had said, and he hadn’t let go of Will’s wrist. 

Will had shrugged again, but he knew better than to think that Beau would let him get away with that. It was disrespectful not to answer properly whenever you’ve been asked a question. “I didn’t want you t’be mad.” He’d said. 

Beau gave Will’s wrist another good shake before getting down on one knee in front of Will, down on the grass, holding his son’s hand in front of Will’s eyes so he had to look at it as well. 

“D’ya know what happens to broken bones if you don’t take care of em’, Will?” He’d said, and Will had shaken his head in reply, dark brown curls falling into his eyes. 

“They never heal right on their own. They’ll heal all out of place, and they’ll hurt, and you won’t be able to work because it hurts so bad. Did you do this so that you don’t have to work, Will?” He’d said, and his voice had gotten louder as he got closer into Will’s space. 

“No, Daddy.” Will had said. “I was just in the tree-” 

“You were playin’, of course.” Beau had cut him off. “You’re trying to turn yourself into a cripple and you didn’t even do it from doing something useful.” 

Will had looked away from Beau then, his eyes fixed towards the double wide, towards the sun that was hanging low in the sky, towards the top of the canopy tree that he could just see over the roof. He wanted to burn the tree down just then, get rid of the evidence of him being so useless so that he didn’t have to feel this great brick of shame that he felt sitting heavy on his chest. 

Beau had made Will go back inside alone and had moved the motor by himself before getting inside of his truck and driving off to the small drug store in town to get a hand brace for Will and a case of beer for himself. When he’d gotten back it was almost dark out, and Will was sitting on the scratchy, overstuffed floral sofa in the front room without any lights on, the dark evening shadows cut blue across his son’s small face, and Will had been staring out into space, his eyes fixed somewhere off in the middle distance, and he’d been pressing his small, thin fingers into the bruising of his right hand, hard, pushing the bones around in a way that Beau knew must hurt like hell. 

“Will.” He’d said, loud and sharp to cut through the quiet around them. Will’s hands had immediately flown away from each other, and he’d looked at Beau with such a wide-eyed little look, so much like his mother in that moment, somewhere between defensive, lost and violent. 

Beau couldn’t find it in him to say anything else. At least Will knew better than to do that kind of thing in front of him. 

So he’d sat his son down in a cheap old folding chair from outside, he’d knelt in front of Will and strapped his son into the cheap black hand brace as carefully as he could. They didn’t have health insurance, not with the kinds of odd-job work Beau did, and a hospital trip for this would’ve put them out for months. Beau didn’t bother explaining all of that to Will just then, he figured that Will would understand whenever he got older, what he did do was he got up from the floor in front of Will and stepped into the tiny shared bathroom for a moment. There was a small, worn-out leather bag under the sink that Will had assumed held his father’s shaving tools.

Beau brought it out, and in front of Will unzipped it and pulled out a small orange pill bottle that rattled around half-full. 

Beau had stashed most of Will’s mother’s assorted medications away from before she’d died, just in case they were ever needed. As specified earlier, the two of them didn’t have much money for medical help, and the small leather bag contained a well-stocked concoction of painkillers, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants that Beau had figured would one day become useful to them.

Beau knew better than to use them himself, mixing these kinds of pills with his drinking would surely make Will an orphan in less than a year. He knew giving one to Will now probably wasn’t right, but his son was in pain, and had felt the need to hide it from his father so as to prove some kind of point. Beau didn’t know how to fix it any other way, and with how much Will already took after his mother, he’d probably end up prescribed the same shit that was in the bag eventually anyways. 

Will’s blue eyes had narrowed at the sight of the large pill in Beau’s hand in a way that made the older man’s stomach feel uneasy, but he handed it to Will anyway and Will swallowed it dry without a thought. He trusted his father, despite having every reason not to. 

Will hadn’t fallen asleep immediately, but Beau had left him inside the house so that he could go and get some work done on the motor left outside, just as he’d meant to before all of this. He also wanted to avoid the sight of his son, that hand brace only serving as a reminder of how afraid Will was of him. Will’s presence in general was a constant reminder of his failings, his failings as a parent, his failings as a husband. It made Beau’s stomach twist, and made Will hard to look at sometimes. 

-

It’s just over four years later now, and Will can still tell that he broke his hand all that time ago. A week is a long time to go without setting the bones right, and his middle and pointer fingers are the worst off, still crooked in places that only he can probably notice. He can see the bends in the bones that are in all the wrong places when he holds his fingers up in front of his face and compares them to the straight lines of the support beams on the dock that stand above him. 

“Are you flipping me off, son?” Beau’s rough, accented voice cuts through Will’s train of thought and he immediately drops his hand to his lap. Will is sat cross-legged on the smooth, warm wood of the dock deck. The sun above them is beginning to drop low, bringing in the evening, but is still burning brightly, and the warmth had almost lulled Will into sleep. He’s always so tired these days. Beau’s presence above him shakes the ease from his shoulders though, and Will scrambles up to meet his father immediately.His bare feet against the wood, his eyes squinting against the sun that faces him from behind his father’s shoulder. 

“No, was just lookin’.” He says,flexing his hand out in front of him as if to help his father understand what he meant, although Will knows that it isn’t much of an explanation. Talking, that’s another thing that has grown more difficult recently. Words seem to get caught in his throat, or stick heavy to the roof of his mouth, or he finds that he can’t find the right words for what he wants to say at all. 

Beau sighs at him and gives him a long, tired look. The two of them aren’t so different in height these days. Will had shot up sometime last spring, all gangly, overly-large limbs and eyes that sat too large in his skull. His shins still ache with growing pains that promise an inch or two more at least. His build is still slim though, and his father shadows him with a sturdiness gained from a lifetime of heavy drinking and manual labor.

“There’s not much more you can help out here with today.” He says to Will, and Will had known that, that was why he’d been sitting. He knew better than to be lazy if there was still work to be done. 

“But I’m gonna stay out here and talk t’all them for a while.” Beau says, and he gestures vaguely with his chin towards the small handful of other fisherman further up the dock. They stand with their worn-out caps pulled low over their leathery faces and each one has a half smoked cigarette hanging from the downturned lines of their mouths. Good, hardworking Southern men, the lot of them. 

Will knows that “talk” is code for “drink” with that crowd, the same way that he knows that he more than likely won’t see his father again until it’s time to head back to the dock for work again tomorrow morning. 

“So you best get outta here and I’ll see you later.” Beau says, and Will nods. He hands Will a few crumpled bills that had been shoved hastily into the pocket of his faded jeans from his pay out earlier, and Will accepts them with a nod. “Thanks, Daddy.” He says, and Beau says nothing, just gives Will a short nod before turning back to join his peers. Will is struck with the sharp feeling of cold dismissal before he can think to blink the thought away. 

  
  


Looking down at the cash in his hand, Will knows he should be getting paid more. He does all the same work as Beau does at this point, and he’s out on the docks for just as long, but that hasn’t stopped Beau from taking more than a share out of Will’s cut for years now. No matter what work they were doing, fishing or repairs or otherwise. It was a promise that Will wouldn’t see the full profit from his day. 

It shouldn’t matter, as Beau driving them around the country in whatever half broken down truck he’s driving that month is the only reason Will has any work to do at all, but it stings. Mostly in the way that Beau does it so confidently, like he knows Will will never say anything to him about it. Which so far, Will hasn’t. 

Will shoves the cash into the pocket of his jeans, and later he’ll add it to the battered old shoebox he has hidden from his father under his bed where all the rest of his pay has been going for the past few summers. Will knows that if Beau saw how much Will actually had saved, he’d be furious. Paying Will anything at all is already a formality, if Beau knew that Will had proper savings it would seem like a disrespect. If Will had all that money, why wasn’t he helping to pay for repairs on the truck? Why was he acting like he had anything to save for? Why couldn’t he just blow his money on diner food and beer bought from the shady gas station down the road that sells to underage teens like every other kid in the area?

As it is now, Will still has a few years of high school left, which means a few more years of Beau dragging him to every small town near a body of water in the country to drop into a new school every few months. Will knows that Beau has been hoping for Will to drop out for a while now, just like Beau did himself when he was Will’s age, so that Will can fully devote himself to working with him on the docks, but Will knows better.

It’s a tale as old as time and he knows that if he doesn’t finish school he’ll end up working the docks and living in the same kind of double wide trailer they live in now., surrounded by faded floral wallpaper and chipped countertops. He’d marry one of the young waitresses at the late night diner in town who smoke too much for teenagers and wear their fried blonde hair up in a big pile on their heads, maybe together they’d have another fucked up little son to join a long line of fucked up sons, and they’d let him wander around the bayou too much during the summer because they don’t know what else to do with him, and eventually Will’s back would go out and then lung or liver cancer would get him in the end. 

If Beau heard Will thinking like this, he’d probably give him some old, worn out look he always does and he’d force Will to look at him in the eyes while asking him what he’d done as a father to make Will think that he was so much better than everyone else around here. Will doesn’t think that though, he just doesn’t want to feel so empty all of the time. 

The walk from the docks back to the trailer isn’t too long. They live in a group of trailers that are mostly occupied by other dockworkers. Will is the youngest resident there by far. The sun is still beating down hot and Will knows the double wide will be stuffy and miserable for a few more hours at least until the sun is fully set. 

They’ve been living in Slidell for a few months now, and it's one of the nicer places that they’ve stayed in a long time, or maybe it’s just familiar. They usually came back to Louisiana in the summers. The season is always busy here, and the people here seem to ease the hunched line of Beau’s shoulders in some way. 

The town is small, but there’s money around, so it’s decent enough. It’s usually better for Will when they stay in the poor towns, that way he won’t seem so out of place at school, but it’s summer, so that doesn’t matter much. He doesn’t have anywhere to be when he finishes at the docks, so he can walk into town or back to the trailer or he can take his old bike sometimes and find somewhere good to hide and think. 

Will has always been good at that, at disappearing into his own head. He didn’t always mean to do it, but sometimes Beau would have to shake Will’s shoulders hard to get him out of his thoughts, and Will would look around him and realize hours had passed since he was last coherent. It’s jarring, when he comes back. It makes him feel out of place in his own skin, like he’s someone else entirely, sometimes. It’s better not to think about those times all too much, although they’ve become increasingly difficult to avoid.

It’s not safe to go too far out near the swamps alone during the summer, but he walks as far as it’s smart to. The air is warm and heavy and all he can hear is the chirping sound of cicadas in the trees above him. He steps off of the main road that leads away from the docks and diverts down a gravel path that leads into the woods near the swamps. It isn’t a proper, thick woods, but there’s enough space that the trees grow tall enough to block out the sun, and Will can settle in between their thick roots with tall grass hiding him from sight and he can rest his head on top of the old backpack he always carries. Sometimes he’ll strip off his shoes and shirt and let his skin breathe after a day baking in the sun, but it’s gotten warmer, and he doesn’t want to be covered in bug bites by the end of the day.

There’s also another reason that he likes to come out here. 

Will walks himself further into the woods, until the gravel path fades into a dirt trail and then into open land. The long grass tickles against his shins and the air turns cooler. He breaths in and his lungs feel lighter somehow. 

He finds his usual spot, under a large tree with old roots that can cocoon him somewhat. He’s found that he favors the feeling of small spaces. Concealment, or the feeling of being surrounded at all sides. He settles down and the grass underneath his bare legs is slightly damp, the humidity never leaves the air here. 

He pulls his backpack off of his shoulder and unzips it, rummaging around it’s scattered contents. There’s not much inside, some old fishing lures, an old baseball cap of his father’s that he wears sometimes, a small pocket knife, a flashlight, and at the bottom of the bag is a battered Marlboro cigarette box. He picks it up and flips the top open, tips it over and shakes the pack gently until a large pill falls into the palm of his hand. 

This part of his ritual isn’t exactly new. Technically, he’s not supposed to be taking the pills during the day. Beau had said that they were meant for whenever Will was having his night terrors or whenever he couldn’t sleep, but Beau had never stopped giving Will the refills even when Will started to need them at an increasingly frequent rate. 

So Beau must know that Will was taking them more than he was strictly supposed to, but It’s not like Will isn’t able to do his work at the docks. He gets his schoolwork done, he makes conversation with the dock workers when it’s needed, nobody cares if he’s a little high. He’s probably all the more palatable for it. 

Will pops two of the pills into his mouth and swallows thickly, he doesn’t need anything to drink with them anymore, they don’t taste like anything. 

He settles down and relaxes back against the backpack and breathes in slowly. The air smells like foliage and earth. He lets his arms fall down to his sides and presses his fingertips to the cool grass. TIme passes and he doesn’t care enough to keep track of how quickly it goes. Sometimes it is unfairly comforting to avoid participation. 

Will has to remind himself to remain solid, when it is so easy to imagine himself spilling into the earth, like water or blood. 

It’s hard to tell when the pills kick in anymore. It's a gentle high, his skin grows warmer, the texture of his clothes feels softer. His thoughts feel far away and are difficult to hold onto for much time at all, he could fall asleep if he didn’t enjoy the feeling of it so much, and sleep always ruins things for him anyway. 

It’s almost like a pendulum swinging. A blink of his eye and he’s somewhere else. It’s hard sometimes to keep his thoughts from carrying him someplace dark, towards his mother, or to school counselors, or to the man who lives in the trailer across from theirs whose eyes send cold chills down the backs of Will’s arms. 

It makes Will feel guilty, how looking at certain people makes him feel sick. He’s found that it’s best to just avoid eye contact in general so as to avoid that stomach-twisting feeling. This is a trait that Beau battles Will on constantly. But if he saw what Will could see, he would do the same. 

Will is absently aware that there is something wrong with him. Other people don’t get sick from looking at other people, other people don’t think horrible things, or envision horrible acts when they close their eyes. Other people can sleep through the night without pills to help them do so. He’s been aware of this for a few years now, as much as he’s been aware that there’s nothing that he can do about it for about the same amount of time. 

Whatever doesn’t kill you mocks you for being aware of it’s attempt but unable to prevent it. 

Two years ago Beau had returned home to find Will half feral and shaking in the motel room in Greenville that they’d been staying in at the time when he’d been supposed to be at school. Will had been delirious, breath hitched and frantic, his palms shoved against his eyes so tightly that his father couldn’t wrench them away. Beau had shook his shoulders and demanded Will tell him what was wrong, and Will had tried to explain that one of his teachers had done something awful to his daughter that morning, that Will had looked into the man’s eyes and had seen it, could feel how angry the man was, could feel that anger himself, heavy and thick and black on his tongue. 

Beau had looked at him for a long time, and Will had tried not to cry, he hadn’t wanted to cry in front of his father, and crying hadn’t even felt right anyway. He’d felt angry and sick, he’d felt out of his mind. 

Beau had told Will to pray for his teacher. He’d said that that’s what you’re supposed to do whenever you think that someone has done something bad, something that is impossible to come back from. 

Beau hadn’t been raised in the church, but after Will’s mother had died he’d found God. He believed that God had used his wife’s death as a punishment because he had gotten her pregnant before they were married. He didn’t say it out loud, but he also sometimes believed that Will being the way he was was further punishment for his sins. 

So he’d told Will to pray, and he'd given him the bottle of pills he’d been dosing his son with occasionally for years and told him to take them when he needed to, but not during work, and to be careful, and that had been that.

Will still prays. It’s hard to discern if it’s a subconscious attempt to please his father, or if it is an honest call for guidance. He prays that the images he sees when he closes his eyes will go away, he prays for the people he meets eyes with that send shivers down his spine, he prays for his father too, but only sometimes. 

Will has never had someone to communicate these types of thoughts to. He’s lived for too long in a self-imposed loneliness. He doesn’t know how to be around people, he couldn’t ask for someone to listen to these thoughts even if he knew how to, anyway. So he turns to God sometimes, and he feels less lonely in his own way. 

He likes to envision his mother as some kind of holy protective body as well. A heavenly spirit that is only focused on him. God has too many people to attend to to be held responsible for one teenager in Louisiana, but his mother is his alone, and Will has been told to remain selfless for so long that he indulges himself in selfishness with this. 

He knows that his mother was not by definition a holy person. She was a sick teenage girl who made immature choices and by extension of that left Will alone to live in the fallout, but Will knows from the way that his father looks at him sometimes that he is like his mother. He knows that for some amount of time, there was a person in the world who felt things the way he does now, and that feels like divinity in it’s own way. 

It’s dark by the time Will’s eyes open again. His eyelids are heavy, and his muscles feel loose. The buzzing of the cicadas in the trees has been joined by the chirping of crickets in the long grass surrounding him. The air isn’t much cooler, and the heat and the darkness come together in an odd energy, a feeling that forces him into some kind of alertness. 

Will knows that he’s coming down. The high of the pills last a good while, but his tolerance is high and the fun part is over.

It’s better not to stay in the woods after dark, so he gathers his backpack up and slings it over his shoulder. The grass has pressed thin lines across the skin of his arms and legs and he runs his fingertips over them gently, watching how they disappear into each other. Blades of grass are also stuck in the tangles of his dark hair, and his shoes have mud caked around the faded white bottoms. He looks like a wild thing, emerging from the woods. Will knows that his father won’t be home to see him like this, but he also knows that if he was he would give Will a stern lecture upon the sight of him. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and they may be poor, but they didn’t have to look feral. 

The walk back from the woods to the trailer feels longer at night. He gets to the main road and there’s no cars around, just the faint pink glow of old street lights. The whole town pretty much shuts down after six PM, leaving empty roads and a peaceful quiet for him to walk in. 

He approaches the wide circle of trailers. Someone has music playing from a radio in their window. It’s playing some old blues song over crackly speakers, and Will doesn’t remember hardly anything of substance about his mother, but he does remember her playing songs like this around their old house. 

These little things sometimes feel like signs from God, or from her, in some way. 

He doesn’t go inside just yet. He stands out in the gravel lot that’s been made up in the middle of their circle of trailers, the gravel is littered with cigarette butts and bottle caps. He kicks the tiny rocks around with the toe of his sneaker and listens to the song play out. 

_“Early this mornin', when you knocked upon my door_

_Early this mornin', oh, when you knocked upon my door_

_And I said, "Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go"_

Okay, maybe not a message from God, then. 

The song peters out, and Will lifts his head sharply as the fading music is replaced by the metallic sound of a lighter clicking open. His own gaze is met by a pair of dark, sunken eyes. Yellowed whites around dark pupils and a lazy, crooked smile framed by old frown lines. 

This is another reason why Will usually chooses to avoid the trailer during the day. The man in front of Will had introduced himself to Will and his father about a week or so after they moved in. Breaking the code that Will had grown up with in these types of places that nobody ever really talk to each other out of respect. The man had invited Beau over to drink a beer or two in his own trailer and when Beau had come back home late that night, he had warned Will not to go over there or to talk to that man again.

The man was called Wayon, and so far Will hadn’t ever seen him leave the trailers, He sat outside most of the day on a sun-bleached plastic lawn chair, drinking and smoking and staring hard at Will whenever he found himself around. He was the type of man that sent Will’s stomach turning and made sweat prick against the back of his neck. In reality, Wayon was probably just an old alcoholic living off of state benefits and waiting to die, but Will couldn’t shake the images that painted the air around the other man. 

“Y’not the only kid around here no more, huh?” Wayon says, and his voice is a low, raspy wheeze, like the sound is fighting to escape his throat. His cigarette hangs out of his mouth and ash builds up at the end of it, grey and powdery. He looks at Will as if Will is supposed to know what the other man is talking about, Will doesn’t. 

“I dunno what you mean.” Will shrugs, and he focuses his gaze onto the bright red cherry of the cigarette instead of the other man’s eyes, hoping that it gives off the impression that Will is at least looking the other man in the face. 

He longs to dart back into the safe darkness of his and Beau’s trailer. Part of him is afraid of what Beau will do if he comes back home and sees Will talking to this man that he specifically told him not to, the other part is afraid of what this man will do when he knows Beau isn’t there. 

“Y’haven’t seen him then? The other boy?” Wayon says. The other man is still giving Will a strange, lopsided smile. Will thinks absently that surely someone must be responsible for this man. An estranged child, an ex wife, _someone_ who could come and collect Wayon and take him somewhere where he has something to do other than wait around for people to show up to the trailers so he could corner them and act like he had anything interesting to say. There was nothing Wayon could know that would be of any interest to Will at all. 

So Will shakes his head, and begins to politely step in the direction of his trailer, shrugging a little again. 

“He doesn’t look a thing like you.” Wayon laughs, a rattling thing that sounds like it hurts. “Y’all look opposites, but he’s just as mean as you.” He laughs again and drops his cigarette to the ground, crushing it with the toe of his heavy old boot. 

“I’m just playin’ with you, y’know.” Wayon continues, and he flashes a look at Will that Will believes is this man’s attempt at earnestness. 

“Okay.” Will says, and he nods politely before finally turning his back to Wayon and walking the short distance to the trailer. 

“Oh, there’s that boy now!” Wayon says from behind Will, and Will glances back reluctantly. 

Emerging from the woods behind the opposite side of trailers from Will’s is a tall, blonde boy. His hair is long, and hangs in his face. He looks older than Will, but not by much. He’s wearing heavy brown boots and a deep red canvas jacket, clothes far too warm for the kind of heat they are in. 

Wayon’s loud voice seems to have caught the other boy’s attention, because he looks up and immediately catches Will’s stare. The other boy doesn’t look away, and so neither does Will. Sizing each other up, maybe. Young people never live in places like these, but Will had been here longer, so if someone new was going to move in and try and have a problem Will was going to stand his ground. 

The other boy doesn’t say anything though. His gaze drops from Will’s and he walks in long, confident strides towards his own trailer The sound of gravel crunches underneath heavy footfalls. 

“Y’all ain’t tryna’ make friends, I guess.” Wayon laughs again loudly. “I shoulda known.” 

The other boy disappears behind the screen door to his trailer quietly, Will turns around and walks through his own, letting the thing slam loudly shut behind him. 

The living room is dark and the warm air is stuffy and thick. Will is absently aware that he is sweating, and that could either be from the conversation with Wayon or from the comedown from the pills earlier. Either way, he quickly makes his way to the bathroom and strips his clothes off. 

He runs the shower as cold as he can stand and tilts his face up, letting the water run over his eyelids and drip down his chin. He thinks about the other boy. It would be better for the two of them to stay out of each other’s way. Will had work to focus on, and he had his place in the woods, he didn’t need to worry about some teenager on his heels hoping to be shown around town. Although the other boy didn’t seem too eager to make introductions himself, so maybe that won’t be a problem at all. 

Will scrubs the sweat and grass and mud from his skin and then stays under the water until he starts to feel a prickle of a headache from the cold water. He likes showering when Beau isn’t home. It means he can take as long as he wants to without his father banging on the door telling him he’s been in long enough. Will knows that Beau is probably afraid that Will is succumbing to the sin of self pleasure in there, when in reality Will is just avoiding Beau. 

Will hasn’t really had much experience with anything like that, so it’s not like there’s much for Beau to worry about anyways. Will’s relationships with girls in general are always fleeting at best. Classmates or daughters of fishermen who work in the lure shops during the summer. He’s never around a town for long enough to gain anyone’s attention in any significant way. Sometimes something will catch his eye. A particularly long set of tan legs, a flash of pretty brown eyes. Will knows better than to try. He has nothing to offer a girl right now. Social awkwardness and night terrors and a minor pill addiction. 

He’s embarrassed by the occasional thought of longing that crosses his mind at times. 

Once he gets out of the shower and towels off, he makes his way into the kitchen area and opens the fridge. The steril yellow light from the bulb inside cuts through the blue darkness and Will blinks against it. His stomach growls and Will realises that it must be later than he figured. He has a bad habit of waiting till the last possible moment to eat, and then being so hungry that he feels too sick to cook anything of substance. 

There’s not much inside of the fridge to work with anyway, but there’s milk, so Will pours himself a bowl of cereal and takes it into the living room. He sits the bowl onto the arm of the sofa before sliding his hand in between the stiff couch cushions. He pulls out his copy of _The Sound And The Fury._ It’s been risky keeping the book around, but Will can’t trust Beau not to go through his things in his room the next time he’s feeling drunk and suspicious, so it’s better to hide it in plain sight. 

Beau isn’t against reading, he just prefers that Will only read books that contain messages of “strong moral value.” tales of good men fighting for what’s right and defending their families and such. Either that, or the Bible. 

Will is less choosy and is more inclined to read whatever it is that he can get his hands on, and this book had been in the free bin outside of a bookstore somewhere in Tennessee. 

He reads and eats slowly. He keeps half an ear out for the sound of gravel crunching underfoot outside, but nothing comes. Eventually his eyes start to droop and he dog ears the page and slides the book back into its hiding place between the cushions. 

He washes his dishes in the sink, and then goes to his bedroom. There’s not much inside of it, just a twin sized bed with old navy sheets and a flimsy dresser that had been left in the trailer when they got there. There’s also a stack of assorted books that Will has had to read for school in the past piled atop the dresser and a cardboard box in the corner that is filled with small trinkets and fishing lures and whatever else Will doesn’t find worthwhile enough to unpack properly before they leave for a new town at the end of summer. 

Now comes his nightly gamble. He could take another pill now, or attempt the night sober. The pills keep the worst of the night terrors at bay, but it’s risky to take them when Beau has gone out for the night. There’s always the chance that Beau will crash through the front door, drunk and loud, and come to wake Will up while the pills are still in his system. And then Will’s speech will be just as slurred as his father’s and Beau will be disgusted by him and neither of them will get any sleep before work in the morning. 

But there’s always the chance that Beau won’t come home at all, and the opportunity for proper rest proves a little too tempting. Will grabs his backpack and shakes two more pills from the cigarette box. He swallows them before hanging the bag up on the hook behind his door and sliding himself under his thin topsheet. Inevitably he will end up kicking everything off of him in the night anyway. He would normally lay a towel underneath him as well to prevent from staining his sheets with night sweats, but his body feels tired, and the heat and the faint sound of crickets outside lull him into a deep sleep. 

Beau doesn’t come home in the night. Will is awoken in the morning by the pale blush stripes of dawn coming in from between the slanted blinds covering his window. 

His bones feel rested for once, his skin is warm and he stretches his legs out long so that his toes curl over the end of the bed before he sits up and rubs a lazy hand through his hair. 

He dresses quickly, second hand jeans and heavy brown work boots, a thin tee shirt with the logo of some lure shop from a few states ago. He doesn’t bother eating, he slings his backpack over his shoulder and locks the front door up behind him. 

Beau is already at the dock when Will gets there. He looks haggard, he’s still wearing the same clothes from yesterday and his face carries the red flush of someone who is not entirely sober yet. He gives Will an absent nod to acknowledge his presence before they set off side by side towards their boat to start fishing for the day. 

The day is long, but they do well enough, and work mostly silently. Beau goes from drunk to hungover somewhere in the early afternoon and mostly stays on the opposite end of the boat from Will with his hat pulled low over his face. 

They don’t finish early like they did yesterday, but it’s still just sunset when they dock the boat and part ways, Will with his second hand payout and Beau with a bar to head towards for the night. 

Will pockets his money just the same as he did yesterday and heads towards the woods. It’s too risky to take the pills when Beau and Will are working by themselves. When they go out with the other fishermen he can get away with it, he can sink into the background and find a corner to work in while the other men talk, Alone, Beau’s eyes settle too heavily onto Will, and so Will walks a little faster towards the woods than he did yesterday. 

He reaches the woods quickly, diverting off the gravel path and into the grass. He shakes the pills out from the cigarette box as he walks and swallows them quickly. He can still faintly see the imprints that his boots left yesterday on the earth. The air here is cooler today, and the light is darker, the rays of the setting sun blocked out by thick foliage. 

His eyes are still following his own faint tracks from yesterday when he hears the sharp crack of a twig snapping nearby. His head jerks up, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, he is met by the stare of the boy from the trailers. 

Will feels immediately affronted. This is his spot. This boy has been in town for seemingly all of a day before encroaching on Will’s space. 

Will can now see that the other boy’s eyes are dark. His skin is tan, but not in the work-hardened way that Will’s is, his features are angular and strange, his mouth is overly-large and he’s meeting Will with a stiff expression, his shoulders form a hard line, as if he had frozen upon the sight of Will. 

It is then that Will’s eyes drop from the other boy’s and he sees the large body laying between them on the forest floor. 

Will can feel his blood go very suddenly cold. 

Wayon from the trailers is sprawled face-up on the ground. His hands are extended above him, palms up, and his mouth is wide open, as if he’d been screaming, or maybe gasping for breath. There’s a large vomit stain along the front of his shirt which is also caked with mud. His skin is mottled in various shades of blue and grey and purple, and he is very obviously dead. 

The smell hits Will then. Not overly strong, probably due to the shade and the cool air, but strong enough for Will to immediately find himself retching. His throat clicks, and he forces himself to tear his eyes away from Wayon’s body. And it is undeniably Wayon. Will has seen those features too many times in his dreams to deny their familiarity. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Will gasps, still fighting a wave of nausea. His voice is harsh, but shaking. He shifts his gaze back from the forest floor to the boy who stands across from him. 

“I was walking.” He says. He has a strange, lilting accent, and his voice is quiet, calm. Like there isn’t a rotting corpse lying between the two of them.

“Why the fuck were you walking out here? This is my spot.” Will says, and he is aware that it may seem strange that he is immediately more upset about the invasion of his space than he is about the body. 

“I think that it’s probably Wayon’s spot now.’ The other boy says, and Will feels faintly sick. 

Will steps slightly closer, and tries not to breathe too much of the foul air. “What did you do?” He asks. He steadies his voice, moving from shock into self preservation quickly. There’s three people here, one of them dead, and Will didn’t kill Wayon, so he’s reaching the only natural conclusion that he’s standing very near a murderer. 

“I didn’t do anything.” He says, and he also takes a step closer. Will takes an immediate step back. “I just found him here.” The boy continues. 

“Wayon never leaves the trailers.” Says Will, and he looks back down to the body. He wishes he didn’t know who this was, he wishes that he had just gone straight home. 

“Well it would seem that he did today.” The other boy says, and he makes an odd little sound, like a laugh, as if any of this were even slightly funny. 

“He never fucking leaves, why the fuck would he leave now? What the fuck did you do?” Will’s voice raises, and he notes that he might be sounding slightly on the edge of hysterical. 

“I was just walking through the woods, just the same as you. It would seem that both of us are equally as suspicious in this scenario.” The other boy says, and suddenly the look he is meeting Will with shifts from teasing to dangerous with the narrowing of dark eyes. “Did you kill him?” The other boy asks. 

“I just got here!” Will says, incredulous. This situation is shifting quickly into the absurd, and Will cannot shake the feeling that Wayon is watching all of this. His eyes are wide open and glassy. Will had thought that people died with their eyes closed. 

“Killers frequently like to return to the scene of the crime.” The other boy says, like it should be obvious. 

“Not while the body is still there!” Will replies, and the other boy shrugs.

“I wouldn’t know much about that, seeing as I am not a killer.” He says. 

“If you didn’t do it then who did?” Will says. The other boy comes to stand near Will, his expression sobers, and they both turn to face the body together. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Wayon here had a great many enemies.” He says. 

“Not the kinds that kill people.” Will says. 

“He was a pedophile.” The other boy replies. 

“You don’t know that.” Will says, although he is reminded immediately of the twisting gut feeling that he had gotten every time he had seen Wayon. Of the images that played in Will’s head whenever the other man was around. The other boy finally turns to face Will properly, and he’s met with a serious expression. 

“You know it that same way that I do. I think you and I would know it better than anyone around here.” 

“So you’re saying that someone killed him for it.” Will says blankly, 

“It would seem like a possibility, but like you said earlier, I just got here.” The other boy shrugs. 

“We should go tell someone.” Will says after a moment of tense silence. 

“That might be unwise for both of us. I feel fairly certain the police would reach the same conclusion that we did of each other.” He says. 

“That one of us killed him?” Will says, although he knows the answer.

“One of us or both.” He says. 

“Fuck.” Will replies, and the other boy nods in agreement. 

“Indeed.” He says. 

“So what do we do?” Will asks. He isn’t sure why he’s hoping this boy has any kind of answer for them. This probably isn’t a situation that anyone has to deal with more than once in their lives. 

“We could leave him.” The other says, like it’s that simple.

“We can’t fucking do that.” Will says, equally as sure. 

“If someone is making it their goal to rid the world of pedophiles should we really assist in stopping them?” The other boy asks, raising a pale eyebrow at Will. 

“That’s justifying murder.” Will says. He can’t believe that this is a conversation he’s having. He needs another pill. 

“Mostly I am concerned about not being arrested, less than morality.” The other boy replies. 

Will knows that he cannot get himself arrested. He is a low class southern teenager with an alcoholic father and mental disorders yet unspecified. If he went to prison, he would never escape the system, and all that money hidden in his shoebox in his room and all of his grand plans of escape would mean nothing. It would be worse than if he had just resigned to fixing boat motors the rest of his life. It would be a non-existence. 

It seems ironic now that Will’s plans have been to become a cop after he graduates. 

“What if someone finds him.” Will says after a long moment. He hates how he’s beginning to justify the idea.

“Nobody will, and even if they did, we’ll cover our tracks and it will seem like neither of us were ever here.” The other boy says. 

Will takes a breath and inches closer to Wayon’s body. He’s not afraid of it. It’s just strange, to see something so like the images he has flashing through his head every day in person. It’s disarming, and the reality of it makes his heart race. 

He can’t even tell how it was that the other man died, but the expression permanently stretching the man’s face makes it look painful. Will had also thought that people were supposed to look peaceful when they died. The body laying before him looks almost like a caricature. 

“We should cover him up, or something. So that nobody sees.” Will says finally. 

The other boy’s eyebrows raise again. “I feel like that would be deepening our involvement here in a way that might not be helpful to us.” 

“If we just leave him here like this then someone is gonna find him eventually, and we’ll be fucked.” Will says. 

“Then what would you have us do here?” He asks, gesturing towards the body with his right hand. He’s wearing the same dark red jacket that Will saw him in yesterday, the color reminds Will unsettlingly of blood. 

A long beat and then, “The swamp is nearby.” Will says quietly. 

“You are beginning to sound like you may actually be the killer.” The other boy says. 

“I’m not I just-.” Will sighs, and his breath comes in shaky. “We can’t leave him here to be found, we can’t just walk away. We need to get rid of him.” 

Will can’t look at the body anymore. Will imagines himself in Wayon’s position, listening to two teenagers considering how best to dispose of him. The feeling is haunting. 

The other boy takes a long look at Will. “Are you high?” He asks, sounding incredulous now. 

“It’s not that stupid of an idea, the swamp is close and-” 

“No,” The other boy cuts Will off. “I mean are you actually high. Your pupils are dilated and you’re sweating excessively.” 

“I’m sweating because I’m looking at a dead body!” Will says, defensive. In reality he knows that he is pretty high, but instead of the usual warm feeling his brain feels dizzy and fevered and he feels his hands shake. He’s seeing too much and not enough all at once. 

“Okay.” The other boy replies simply. Will gets the distinct feeling that he doesn’t believe him. 

“If we’re going to move him, we need to do it quickly. It’s dark at least, so that’s helpful to us.” He continues. 

The other boy walks a circle around the body, and he sighs distastefully, like Wayon is some passive inconvenience. 

“He’s going to be heavy.” Will notes absently. 

“This was your idea.” The other boy says. 

“I’m just-” Will starts and then stops before taking a breath and continuing, steading himself. “I’m always here. My hair and my footprints are probably everywhere, and he’s my neighbor on top of that, everyone would think that I did this.” 

“I am his neighbor as well.” The other boy offers. 

“Yeah, but nobody knows who you are.” Will replies. 

“Flattering.” He replies. 

They naturally come to stand at opposite ends of Wayon’s body, and Will is hit by a sudden faint memory of lifting a heavy motor from a truck bed with his father as a kid. It could be easy to slip back into the memory and pretend that he is about to move a large motor, something routine and comforting. Except that Will is reaching for a pair of legs, and he is finding himself in the unique position of being thankful for denim and boots covering rotting flesh from his bare hands. 

“On three we’ll lift, and then we’ll dump it in the water, and then we’ll come back and cover our tracks.” Says the other boy from his own place at Wayon’s shoulders. He’s calling Wayon _It_ now, Will notes, but then again Will is actively trying to imagine Wayon as a boat motor, so neither of them seem to be the morally superior one here. 

“Fine, fine.” Will says. He feels the pricking needles of an oncoming headache behind his eyes. 

“I stress again that this was your idea.” Says the other boy, and Will nods. He knows. 

The other boy counts down from three and they both heave Wayon up with one hard pull and both immediately stumble backwards, nearly falling onto the ground themselves. Will isn’t weak by any means, but Wayon’s body feels like it’s filled with concrete instead of blood and organs. 

“Fuck.” Will mutters. 

“We may have to drag him.” The other boy supplies. 

“Jesus Christ.” Will says, again somewhat hysterical. 

“We need to just get this over with.” The other boy says, urging, and Will nods again, swallowing thickly. 

Will joins him at Wayon’s shoulders and they each lift up a thick, heavy arm. Will digs his boots into the soft ground and the other boy counts from three again. 

They heave, and the body slides with them with one long pull.

Will lets out a sigh of relief.

They work silently. The sun has fully set by now and all Will can see of the other boy and the body they are dragging together is dappled by moonlight. The only sound he can focus on is the sound of dull, dragging weight against the damp earth, and then the sound of his own rushed breathing. 

The solid ground gives way to marsh after what feels like ages. Spanish moss hangs from the looming trees around them, giving the effect of a curtain covering the outside world from seeing what they’re doing here tonight. 

Warm swamp water seeps over Will’s boots and soaks into his socks. They wade into the water as far as they can with Wayon dragging behind them. Will can feel soft algae around his legs and the sensation feels disturbingly similar to fingertips grazing his skin. They give Wayon’s body one final pull and he pushes ahead of them. The sound of their arms pushing through the water makes a loud splash that causes them both to flinch. Will thinks absently of the present danger of alligators for all parties involved.

  
  


The other boy seems to remember that danger as well, and they quickly step back onto solid earth. Their jeans are soaked, and Wayon’s face glows pale against the water.

“It looks black in the moonlight.” Will says without thinking. He feels hazy, as if he were halfway out of his own body. 

“What does?” Asks the other boy. Neither of them move their eyes from the floating body as they speak. 

“The water.” Will says, and then, “I think I might throw up.” 

“You probably shouldn’t leave any more evidence nearby than you already have.” The other boy says.

He’s right, so Will swallows deeply and shakes his head. 

They don’t stay long. They walk carefully back the way that they came, stopping along the way to drag fallen leafy branches and to smear mud over their tracks as they go. Will’s hands are shaking badly, and his breath is coming in too short to properly fill his lungs. The other boy walks a few steps behind Will and doesn’t seem to take any notice, or is politely ignoring it. 

Once they get back to where they had found the body, there isn’t much that they can do beyond covering their footprints further. Their tracks make a large circle around an empty space of grass. Will blinks, and he can so clearly see the body still laying there, as if they hadn’t moved it at all. 

Any other evidence beyond their steps is impossible to see in the dark, and the small flashlight from Will’s bag does little to help them beyond revealing that they both look filthy. Will and the other boy are covered in mud up to their knees, and their jeans and shoes hadn’t dried at all during the walk back. Their hands were stained with mud as well, and Will can feel the grainy texture of it beneath his fingernails. The other boy’s expression is fixed in a grim, determined line, and Will occupies himself with trying to mirror it. Resignation is better than panic, he figures. 

“At least he won’t be there to stop us when we get back to the trailers.” The other boy says quietly as they begin the walk back down the gravel path through the woods, back towards the main road. 

“That’s fucked up to say.” Will replies. 

“I think we should take our blessings where they come.” The other boy says. 

“There’s nothing blessed about this.” Will replies sharply, and the other boy shrugs. 

The flash of a car’s bright headlights illuminate them for a second the moment that they emerge from the woods and Will can feel his heart drop cold and heavy into his stomach. He also feels the other boy freeze up next to them, and then hears their twin exhales as the oncoming car speeds past them seemingly without noticing. It’s comforting to know that he isn’t the only one affected by everything. 

“We should stick to the tree line.” Says the other boy, and Will nods. 

A few more cars past, but they are few and far between and the two of them are shrouded behind the tree line now. The trailers come into sight eventually and the fluorescent pink light that they sit under is the most comforting thing that Will has seen in a very long time.

They stop together, neither one of them quite ready to step out into the open just yet. Will’s heart is still hammering against his ribcage, and he can hear the other boy’s quiet breathing, just too quick to be considered calm. 

“Nobody will notice he’s missing for a while.” Will says quietly. 

“We probably shouldn’t speak of it, after tonight. It will be easier for both of us to pretend we saw nothing.” The other boy says. 

Will nods, and stares down at his mud caked boots. “I’ll pray for us.” 

“That’s a strange thing to say.” Says the other boy. 

Will supposes that it might be, but he doesn’t know what else he can do. There’s nothing else that he can do. There’s a body floating in the swamp because of them, and Will isn’t sure how it got into the woods in the first place. He feels suspicious but at the same time frighteningly reliant on the other boy. Bonded in the same was that only two people with an irreversible secret can be. 

The other boy sighs quietly and then speaks again. “What’s your name?” 

It seems funny, now. Will hadn’t even realized during all of this that he didn’t know the other boy’s name, it hadn’t been relevant, and now they’ve just hidden a body together. 

“It’s Will, Will Graham.” He replies. 

The other boy turns and faces Will. He places one large hand on Will’s shoulder and meet’s Will’s eyes with his own.

“Will, it’s important that you know that if God had any part in what we did tonight, he would do nothing but admire his creation’s determination to survive. We’ve done what we had to do to continue living, and Wayon lost that battle for himself, it’s the natural progression of things. God has as much love for the violence of survival as he does peace.” 

“I don’t think I’ve read the same Bible that you’ve been reading.” Will says. He doesn’t like thinking about what they’ve done as some kind of victory, or something to be proud of. Secrets are shameful, and murder, or contributing to a murder, that’s the most shameful thing of all. Will has been plagued by violent thoughts from others his entire life, and now in the span of only a few hours, he’s become just as evil himself. 

“I don’t read the Bible.” The other boy says simply, and he flashes Will a strange smile. He has fanged, awkward canines that give off a vaguely vampiric impression.. “God speaks to me every night.” 

They finally break away from the trees and approach the circle of their homes. Will can feel themselves begin to break away from each other for the first time in hours, pulling themselves towards the opposite directions of their trailers. The space between their bodies feels loaded, like invisible charges passed back and forth. A physical tie towards another person who has the power to completely ruin you.

At the last moment, Will thinks to turn, and the other boy does as well, as if he was waiting for Will to. The pink light slants across his angular features. He looks illuminated and frankly demonic. 

“What’s your name?” Will asks quietly into the dark. 

“Hannibal.” Says the other boy, and he gives Will a small, courteous nod. 

They return to their homes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is @ Parttimesiska


End file.
